Mary El Tarot - The Hanged Man

RunningWild

The Drowned Man

This card perplexed me until I found this from Rachel Pollack's Tarot Wisdom (pg. 152)

"The Golden Dawn introduces an alternative title, the Drowned Man, to match the description "The Spirit of the Mighty Waters." ...In Water, all things that seemed fixed and rigid dissolve, including the ego and its assumptions about reality. To "drown" can mean to surrender, to release the self."

And yet this Hanged Man is held in place by the roots of something else. He is free to look at the world anyway he wants.

Further along in the section on the Hanged Man, Rachel Pollack states:

"The querent who receives the Hanged Man may be an outsider, or with different attitudes than other people, with no push to convince others, and no need to seek others' approval. Being tied to the tree means being connected to something beyond yourself, and thus able to withstand the winds of society or other people's opinions." (pg. 155)

This part isn't particularly revealing, or showing new insight into this card in general, but elsewhere it was noted that, within the Mary-El Tarot, many of each card's insights seem to be things that are just beyond our view of the picture in front of us. So for me, this idea of being connected to something beyond the individual was the part that was missing. Although, I like the idea that the root of the tree holding the Hanged Man was, perhaps, the mangrove-ish roots of the High Priestess.
 

cSpaceDiva

I'm pretty sure that is wisteria vine wrapped around the Hanged Man's calves, judging from the dangling purple flowers. My parents have it growing at their house, and it will wrap around anything. I see the vines here as more supportive than constricting. The funny story is, I did a 'days of the week' spread and I knew I had this card coming up today. Last night I dreamed that my parents had a shower curtain that was decorated with The Hanged Man (from another deck). Looking at the card today, it does kind of look like a shower curtain in the background. I agree with this being a very dreamlike card, and it is in a dreamlike deck. I strongly encourage anyone studying this deck to pay attention to their dreams.

I noted that both legs are straight, rather than having one bent in the typical arrangement. Also, his hands and foot are not nailed like in the Thoth, although he does bear the stigmata on his hands. The way his hair flows out rather than hanging straight down does suggest that his head is submerged. Perhaps that is the surface of the water that we see swooshing across the card? At first I interpreted as winglike structures emerging from his fingertips and shoulders, but water makes more sense.

I too detected a hint of androgyny at first, except the thighs are very muscular and he has an Adam's apple. Perhaps the lack of genitals implies asexuality or simply a period of celibacy.

I get the sense of the moments before birth – upside down in the womb…. Still connected to the Divine.
Wow. I really like that. Birth as the transition that comes up next in the Death card.

In the booklet that came with the Limited Edition majors set, Marie tells a story of Buddha sacrificing himself to feed tiger cubs and their mother; he knows that he and the tigers are one and the same. I wonder if the sacrifice, pictured here in the Hanged Man, becomes the tiger that emerges from the water in the Temperance card?